My sister-in-law said I needed to write about this, so here goes:
I've never been great at waiting, but have learned to do so. In restaurants, I've always been mortified at my mother calling across the room at the waiter or my father holding his cup up to show everyone the emptiness. In lines, I will stand there and have a million complaints running through my head, but never give voice to them. In most situations I would rather wait than draw attention to myself or someone else. In other situations(this has only happened a couple of times, thankfully), I have little to no patience. I think back on the marvelous swiveling tree stand that I bought a couple of years ago. I don't really remember what the whole point of it was, but when you "easily" assemble it, it makes Christmas life wonderful for you. In my case, the "easy" assembling didn't go so well. It turns out that its prior assembly wasn't quite right, but I didn't know that at the time. After a while of messing around with it, I lost my patience and tried to beat it into submission. That did very little to solve the situation and my younger sister looked a little frightened and decided it was time to go home.
And now I am waiting for something to happen which I have absolutely zero control over. I was supposed to leave the states for Odessa in little over a week. But due to a change of law, I need to do all of my visa work prior to entering the country. This delays my departure and leaves me not knowing exactly when I will leave. And the fun part of that is that I have to exchange my plane ticket without knowing if I will have all of my paperwork in time. In a situation like this, I tend to pull inside of myself, because it's easier than having to answer a lot of questions for which I have no answers. Honestly, that's probably why I haven't written about it yet. Even though I know the delay is probably not more than a couple of weeks, I don't know it for sure. And after months of working through my thoughts and emotions of this decision, I felt completely ready to move. After all, everything was planned out: finish training, go home for six weeks, move to Odessa.
But God had different plans than mine, as He often does. He has changed the timing of my departure and is allowing me to learn other things while I'm home. My sister-in-law challenged me recently to stay in the present and not move on in my mind. I know that I've already moved on and am having to do some back-tracking now to be here mentally and emotionally. I'm trying to stay engaged and focus on the people around me. That is my challenge for the moment and I know that I've failed in it over and over in the last month that I've been home. But I am growing and learning through all of this, as He reveals more and more of Himself to me. I am so thankful for His patience, which is never exhausted and His love that is poured out on me more abundantly day by day.
"Make me hear joy and gladness, That the bones You have broken may rejoice." Ps. 51:6
